LITTLE ROCK — The Gallup organization’s “U.S. Presidential Election Center” is a veritable treasure trove of data for political junkies. Doing a bit of number-crunching from their exit surveys for the past three presidential elections (2000, 2004, and 2008) reveals some interesting patterns and unavoidable conclusions.
The “gender gap” is real, and growing: Republicans won the votes of men in the last three presidential election cycles by an average of six points while Democrats won the vote of women by an average of nine. In 2008, that Democrat advantage among women ballooned to 14 points.
Age makes us more conservative. It was supposedly Winston Churchill who said that “if you aren’t a liberal when you are 20 you have no heart; if you aren’t a conservative when you are 40 you have no brain.” According to the Gallup data, Democrats have had a +14 advantage among young people (18-29), but this shifts to a Republican advantage of +5 for those between 30 and 50. However liberal or conservative typical 23-year-olds are, they are likely to be more conservative when they are 43. They also are more likely to vote.
More education makes you more conservative, but only up to a point. Democrats dominate among high school dropouts, but things gradually shift the other way when you move through high school graduates, those with at least some college, and college graduates (who have tilted Republican by +9). Once you get to post-graduate degrees (doctorates, law degrees, etc.), however, the Democrats reacquire a surprising edge of +14. In short, the Democrats depend upon lots of the poorly educated led by a smattering of the highly educated (what Auberon Waugh called the “chattering classes”); the Republicans tend to take more of those in between.
Yes, the GOP is the party of whites and Democrats even more the party of minorities. Along these lines, Republicans enjoyed an edge in the data among non-Hispanic whites of +14, while Democrats in 2008 benefited from a stunning 99-1 edge among blacks, perhaps the most lopsided result among any demographic group in the history of electoral politics in any country. The rarest creature in American politics might be a black woman planning to vote for Mitt Romney.
Republicans are usually in church on Sundays, Democrats usually aren’t. As such, Republicans had a +17 edge among voters who went to church every week (and probably an even larger lead among those who went more often than that), while those who claim to attend church “seldom” or “never” went Democrat by +19. No wonder Democrats had such difficulty with the “God” issue at their convention in Charlotte.
Marriage makes you more conservative. In one of the more interesting results from Gallup, the GOP enjoyed a +16 advantage among married people, while Democrats enjoyed a +25 edge among the unmarried. The Democrat’s “war on woman” charge might be absurd in terms of logic and facts but begins to make some electoral sense when considering the gender gap noted earlier and that single women have favored them by an average of +28. In all, however, moving from young and unmarried to married with kids, a second mortgage, and a higher tax bite means becoming a Republican.
The Republicans might not “own the flag,” but they are clearly more comfortable with the “patriotism” thing. Perhaps the best indicator of this in the Gallup data is the GOP lead among veterans by +20, an edge that almost certainly goes up significantly when considering former officers and career military families. Those groups doing the “U.S.A., U.S.A.” chants at sporting events probably include lots more Republicans than Democrats.
Republicans like guns, Democrats don’t; evidence for which being that gun-owners voted Republican by +26 in the last three presidential contests, while non-gun owners voted Democratic by +17. A gun rack in the house or the pickup seems to be a pretty good indicator of Republican tendencies.
The South used to be “solid” for the Democrats, now it’s solid for Republicans. Whereas Southern whites were once a crucial component of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition, they are now overwhelmingly Republican, with the GOP holding an overall lead of +8 in the region. Since the Democrats now dominate to an even greater extent in the Northeast (+14), that leaves the industrial Midwest (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan) to decide things this year; actually, just about every election year.
Democrats dominate in urban areas, Republicans everywhere else. Along these lines, most big-city mayors are Democrats because Democrats have a +19 edge among inner city dwellers (who are also disproportionately unmarried and minority). In contrast, the GOP wins the affluent (and “whiter”) suburbs by +6 and takes small-town America by a lopsided +15. Where people are most concentrated into tight spaces, you find mostly Democrats, where they are spread out, Republicans.
The way we live and what we see every morning in the mirror increasingly determines how we vote. To a greater extent than that which separates the 53 percent who pay federal income taxes from the 47 percent who don’t, America is divided between middle-aged married white folks with kids who go to church and young unmarried members of various minority groups who don’t.
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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial, Pages 11 on 09/24/2012